Tuesday, 18 September 2012

We will, we will, blog you! Happy Birthday Social Reporters!

The Social Reporting Project is one year old today and this post is a many happy returns from (most of) the reporting crew at the wonderful Transition Conference in Battersea. This week we will be posting our reflections on this latest gathering: Kerry on the Youth Symposium, Jay on REconomy, Ann on the Thrive training, guest blogger, Gary Alexander on the International Hubs and all of us on the main event.

The project kicked off last year with a workshop on Transition and
communications I helped give with our producer Ed Mitchell in Liverpool.
As well as communicating how we envisaged this blog (originally a
three-month pilot), I was also helping out at the media hub and writing
for the Conference blog, and at times it felt as though I was running
around like the proverbial bird without a head around trying to capture
the essence of everything on my own. This year there were six of us
reporting and we were a team. We went to different workshops, we shared
everything (including computers and the rather dodgy internet
connection). Some of us were staying together in fellow reporter, Jo's
flat and travelled together across London, swappping stories, laughing,
sharing responsibility, lightening the load.

If there were three words that encapsulated this year's event, they would be these: sharing, connecting, wellbeing.
What would life be like if these formed the building blocks for our
culture? That could provide us with the resilience and the wherewithal
to face the storm that is surely coming, and make the times we live in
truly extraordinary? A turn-around, a transformation, a change of heart?

I'll
be writing about these threads later on. But right now there is only
word word that I'd like to say: to my (jolly good) fellow bloggers who
have been on this creative journey with me (that's Adrienne, Ann,
Caroline, Craig, Jay, Jo, Joe, Kerry, Mandy, Marella, Mark, Rachel,
Sara, Teen), to all our guest bloggers who sometimes join us, to Ed and
Laura and tech team who always support us, to the ace co-ordinating team
and the Network who made the event so brilliant, to everyone at the Conference who held the core,
who are the very heart of this movement, who provide its rhythm, its
warmth, its beauty and all of its meaning. It's a word I found left on
the living room floor when I came home from Emily and Danny who were
looking after the house while we were away (unsubbed!) . . .

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about this blog

Welcome to my blog - a collection of pieces written for collaborative platforms and grassroots media, including The Dark Mountain Project, This Low Carbon Life, Transition Network, EarthLines and the Grassroots Directory.